The present invention is directed generally to the field of musical drums, and more particularly, a quick-action drum lug assembly and methods of using the same to attach a drum head to a drum body.
A conventional musical drum is typically formed by a cylindrical drum body having one end, and sometime both ends, covered by a drum head. The drum head typically includes a rim which holds a drum skin in tension over the drum body. The rim is secured to the drum body by a plurality of tension screws which pass through the rim and are received in brackets mounted around the periphery of the drum body. When it becomes necessary to remove the drum head, for maintenance or to simply install a different drum head, the tension screws must be unscrewed from their corresponding brackets, the old drum head removed, the new/repaired drum head placed over the drum body, and the tension screws retightened. This is a time consuming and cumbersome task.
A number of devices have been proposed in the prior art to facilitate the installation of new or replacement drum heads. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,506,586 to Brewer discloses a quick-release drum head restraint device that utilizes a pivoting lug, referred to as a “toggle unit,” that helps anchor the tension screws. A spring-based approach is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,122,747 to Yamashita, with a different spring and lever approach shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,533,324 to Price. Still other designs of drum head systems are shown in U.S. Patent Application Publication 2004/0065185, including an approach that uses downwardly pointing hooks (see FIG. 9 of the publication). Of course, numerous other drum head tensioning devices have also been proposed, but none have proven entirely satisfactory.
Thus, there remains a need for alternative approaches to providing tension to drum heads.